En­hance your cof­fee buzz

Su­san Jane White

For­give me. I’m not about to say that cof­fee is the new kale. I can tell you’re dev­as­tated (I know you flirt with the recipe ti­tle be­fore ever con­sid­er­ing the ac­com­pa­ny­ing col­umn. Gotcha).

On the plus side, I can up­grade your cof­fee. Make it se­ri­ously snazzy. Sound good?

Turmeric milk has long been cel­e­brated for its gorgeous taste as well as its medic­i­nal ben­e­fits. The neon-yel­low pig­ment that gives turmeric its glow? Cur­cumin.

And boy, has it caused much gid­di­ness among sci­en­tists and doc­tors. Ex­ten­sive re­search over the last half cen­tury has re­vealed sev­eral im­por­tant func­tions of cur­cumin. Here are some of the re­sults so far: First, cur­cumin has shown to help reg­u­late in­flam­ma­tion in the body. Bron­chi­tis, arthri­tis, col­i­tis, ego-itis — any­thing that ends in -itis. Nice one. Se­condly, cur­cumin has demon­strated anti-an­gio­genic pro­pri­eties dur­ing ex­ten­sive clin­i­cal tri­als on cell cul­tures. That’s doc­tor speak for anti-can­cer. Thirdly, cur­cumin con­trib­utes to the re­duc­tion of amy­loid plaque, a hall­mark of Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

One study even com­pared cur­cumin with ibupro­fen for pain re­lief in over 100 pa­tients with os­teoarthri­tis. Clin­i­cal amounts of cur­cumin suc­ceeded in eas­ing pain and im­prov­ing func­tion about as ef­fec­tively as the ibupro­fen.

Bonkers, right? It’s im­por­tant not to self-med­i­cate, how­ever, and to find a sup­port­ive GP or health prac­ti­tioner to in­ves­ti­gate this av­enue specif­i­cally in re­la­tion to your own needs. Pro­longed clin­i­cal use of turmeric is not suf­fi­ciently re­searched, nor its re­la­tion­ship with other med­i­ca­tions. But in the mean­time, I’m tur­bocharg­ing my cof­fee with this gold dust!